New 55 Gallon Tank Thread

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I'm not seeing a thermometer on your equipment list; you should have one. I agree with the Python idea, but even so, IMHO you can never have too many buckets. :) And, yes, latex paint is pretty easy to use...but a black trash bag taped to the tank is way, way faster to apply, way faster to remove if desired, re-usable and is the way to go.

I have become somewhat enamoured with goldfish in recent years; aside from a couple of small ones I owned for a short time back around 1970, I haven't kept them in all those intervening years but they are now the main inhabitants of my biggest tank, a 360-gallon plywood job. There are lots of potential tankmates for them that will do fine at any temperatures you are likely to see in an unheated indoor tank. Mine live with Corydoras paleatus and Scleromystax barbatus cats, Garra flavatra and G.rufa (doctorfish), Gymnogeophagus rhabdotus cichlids, and Buenos Aires tetras. Other potential temperate-water inhabitants would be Weather Loaches, Odessa Barbs, Swordtails, White Cloud Mountain Minnows and many, many more.

Not all of these will live together perfectly. Big Goldfish will eat small fish like White Clouds; Buenos Aires tetras can be fin-nippy if not kept in sufficient numbers, and especially so with big goofy slow-moving long-finned varieties of Goldfish; in other words, you still need to exercise common sense in combining them.

Remember that Goldfish get big and they do it pretty quickly. Don't stuff your tank full of small fish because you think it looks too empty and you want the full effect right now, this instant. Within a year or two, even a couple of Goldfish can make a 55 look quite small. Think ahead. The Goldfish tanks which you have shown in those pics all have a couple of things in common: they all look very colourful and attractive now...and they will all be painfully overcrowded, with attendant water quality and maintenance problems, a year or two down the road when those cute little Goldfish become BIG FAT GOLDFISH.
 
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These goldfish grew from 1¨to above, in a year.
So a 55 gal will not comfortably hold as many as most people think.

I paint a styrofoam panel black , and tape it to the back of a tank instead of painting the tank itself, it allows the tank to be turned around if the front glass gets scratched, and also provides a tad of extra insulation in winter in case of a power outage (more important with tropicals) or cool water fish on excessively hots ones.
 
I'm not seeing a thermometer on your equipment list; you should have one. I agree with the Python idea, but even so, IMHO you can never have too many buckets. :) And, yes, latex paint is pretty easy to use...but a black trash bag taped to the tank is way, way faster to apply, way faster to remove if desired, re-usable and is the way to go.

I have become somewhat enamoured with goldfish in recent years; aside from a couple of small ones I owned for a short time back around 1970, I haven't kept them in all those intervening years but they are now the main inhabitants of my biggest tank, a 360-gallon plywood job. There are lots of potential tankmates for them that will do fine at any temperatures you are likely to see in an unheated indoor tank. Mine live with Corydoras paleatus and Scleromystax barbatus cats, Garra flavatra and G.rufa (doctorfish), Gymnogeophagus rhabdotus cichlids, and Buenos Aires tetras. Other potential temperate-water inhabitants would be Weather Loaches, Odessa Barbs, Swordtails, White Cloud Mountain Minnows and many, many more.

Not all of these will live together perfectly. Big Goldfish will eat small fish like White Clouds; Buenos Aires tetras can be fin-nippy if not kept in sufficient numbers, and especially so with big goofy slow-moving long-finned varieties of Goldfish; in other words, you still need to exercise common sense in combining them.

Remember that Goldfish get big and they do it pretty quickly. Don't stuff your tank full of small fish because you think it looks too empty and you want the full effect right now, this instant. Within a year or two, even a couple of Goldfish can make a 55 look quite small. Think ahead. The Goldfish tanks which you have shown in those pics all have a couple of things in common: they all look very colourful and attractive now...and they will all be painfully overcrowded, with attendant water quality and maintenance problems, a year or two down the road when those cute little Goldfish become BIG FAT GOLDFISH.
Thank you for the detailed response! Overstocking is definitely my main concern as I am trying to avoid that. How many fancy goldfish do you recommend for a 55 gallon?
 
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This is what I mean by taping styro to the tank.
It was especially needed for fish that required stability during power outages
Paint the insides facing tank black, and tank sides and bottom .
I would also have one at the ready for the front glass plate to tape on during power outages.
Inside looked like this.
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